


A Bridge Between Worlds

by daniwritesattimes



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 02:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30132534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daniwritesattimes/pseuds/daniwritesattimes
Summary: There is a bridge between worlds. It is a bridge between realities both life and death. It is a link between mortality and the afterlife and in it wanders two entities permanently. One of those two entities is the chaperone of the lives that are lost in the mortal realm. As for the other entity, the second, he is held responsible for who goes and who stays.
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Nara Shikamaru
Kudos: 7





	A Bridge Between Worlds

There is a bridge between worlds. It is a bridge between realities both life and death. It is a link between mortality and the afterlife and in it wanders two entities permanently.

One of those two entities is the chaperone of the lives that are lost in the mortal realm. Once a mortal has fallen, he is summoned to take the soul along with him wherever he is meant to deposit it. He goes to and fro on a long bridge that stands over and under a void that is black for all of infinity. The bridge itself is a dull, ashen grey that lasts as long as the soul’s life spent when it was once alive. The soul revisits these memories and milestones before being sent off to their final destination whether it be to an eternity of punishment or reward.

As for the other entity, the second, he is held responsible for who goes and who stays. He, the light of life, also extinguishes the flames of souls who have lived to see their final day. He takes what once was a light, now a traveling soul and delivers it to the chaperone who arrives at his entry. The structure of which the light of life conducts his eternal duties is tall, its limit invisible to anyone but him. It lasted for eons, but not as far as the void beyond it and the bridge of memories. He lit the lights the same as he dimmed them. Each day was of the same rotation. He would light a glow as he would let one go out. Though it had been an eternity of the rhythm and flow, it was never any easier for the light of life to remove a glow from his walls. Still, it meant that he would see the chaperone who he had grown quite fond of over the many millenniums.

Each day the light of life would see the escort’s face. It was cool to the eye and touch, but it calmed the light when there were days of slaughter, mass deaths or tragedy. The calm escort grounded the light from the heights of his concerns and tall walls of countless lives he monitored. The escort, Shikamaru, would often appear and center himself on the circular floor of the tall structure and stare up, watching the light work as he flowed from wall to wall, life to life as the light gathered the necessary souls for delivery. Each day, Shikamaru would be mystified by the light’s movement and glow especially as the glowing being sank down to meet him on the ground where the escort was bound. 

In all the light’s glory, the chaperone would wonder how the lighter of the two would ever ground himself to his level, to meet his cold, dull eyes. He wondered why the light looked at him so. The life bearer, to the shadow of the two, was ethereal, a beautiful force too powerful for him and the souls he delicately carried. The power the light held was unlike the role the shadow found himself carrying. And each time, he dreaded escorting the misty souls across the bridge, away from the light that glowed brilliantly compared to the bridge of recollections. However, when it came time for him to return, each of the chaperone’s dull steps lightened just a bit.

They would feel each other’s presence. Neji, the light would feel if the other was near the same was Shikamaru would feel if a life had been lost. Neither of the two needed much communication in what they did. They communicated plenty by being so interconnected.

Visits consisted of them anticipating the visit from the arrival to the small amount of time their roles allowed them to spend together. That’s what made the visits like no other. It made their time precious. Shikamaru would lean in the entry way if he didn’t fully submerge in the structure’s glow and warmth. Neji would swoop down and circle around the grey entity, surrounding one another to their best ability as Neji delivered the souls to the shadow. Neji did it with a warm smile that matched his heat, but he never touched the other.

Long ago, they discovered that the only thing that could extinguish Neji’s eternal flame was the touch of the shadow. Neither of them knew why, but the gods were beings of few words. They could not ask, they could only do as they were put into their places to do, so they decided to adapt to it as well as they knew how, and get as close as they could ever be without even the slightest touch.

For years, decades, centuries, eternity, Neji lit the lights, out then out, gave them up, and for years, decades, centuries, eternity, Shikamaru would gather them from just above Neji’s blazing palms for deposition on the other side of the long, empty bridge. As time continued, Neji’s castle of light would grow and grow until its height could not be recorded by the wandering shadow, until it faded into the eternal void that surrounded the memory bridge. However, as the roof of the building stretched on, so did the grey bridge. For, with the passing generations came knowledge passed on to the newer generations. Living conditions for mankind improved as their lifespan lengthened. They lived longer lives which warmed Neji’s glowing heart, but he did not see the chaperone nearly as much as he did once upon a time. The lives of others came at a trade-off so it seemed.

Neji traveled the heights of his tower less and less until his drift slowed to nothing. Time went by then more time only for Neji to face an empty entry and empty floor. He grew lonely, and arguably, less radiant. Years passed, decades, then centuries. Mankind had gone off into a world of advances that were untouchable by him. Safety was at its optimal level, medicine and more. Mankind eventually did not die until it was a choice, and in the newer mortal realm, death was never chosen. Lighting a new glow was almost just as rare as putting one out before it all came to a halt. Mortals had mastered life and bent it to their wills along with the time the light of life got to spend with the shadow. 

There came a time when Neji sank to the floor of his castle for the first time since the first generation of men were brought to be. Neji had shone brightly and left the ground for as long as he had been tasked with giving and taking life. That day, however, he sank to the bottom as countless lights flowed overhead, nearly outshining his everlasting burn. He did not watch the smaller flames dance. He did not study them closely for signs of extinguish. He simply allowed life to go on above and around him. He was alone and essentially of no use. His flame no longer had value. He sat and glowed and glowed and glowed until he felt an odd feeling. It crept through him. It was not the feeling of the returning shadow, it was something unfamiliar. He held himself as his own light began to shrink. His tower began to illuminate itself using the lights of others that drained him, the source. There were too many. Each of the lights took something from him, a spark but only a spark. Life had grown to a point where his burn was being stretched thin. He stared up towards the roof of the tower that began to blur through his blazing white eyes that dulled with each second he spent uselessly sunken to the floor. A floor that began to cool beneath him. Now he knew what the feeling was. It was what he felt when he touched the wandering shadow. It was coldness. The feeling that crept through him were chills of being stretched to a point of exhaust. Neji only held himself in an attempt to reinforce his own heat that would not be returned by the greedy lights.

Neji’s sit turned into a curl against the cooling floor as he watched his shivering hands. They began to go transparent and fade into slow embers. The sight of it alone cooled his blazing core. Neji returned the remainder of delicate hands against his flaming being in hopes of the erasure stopping on its own. It had never happened before. He didn’t know what to do. He watched the nearest lights that glowed on his lower-most wall. With each moment he spent on the floor, abandoned and abused, the small glow on the wall outburned the one who once bore light itself. His bright glow began to fade until he neared the color of what once was the bridge of memories. He grew dull, cold and still as his tower glowed on without him.

Neji’s eyes remained white, but heatless, heartless, dull as the once known shadow wanderer, the escort, the chaperone whom Neji hadn’t been joined with for countless generations. Neji shakily reached out and placed his hand against the floor, feeling it warm his hand as opposed to cooling it as it once did. He had fallen far too cold. There was ice in isolation and stress in being stretched to no end. He laid, a grey, dusty flame collapsed in a heap against the warmer stone of the structure.

The light on the wall hissed. Neji opened his dead, white eyes to find that the light that once glowed lighter than him had been extinguished. He heard a second hiss, then a third and a fourth and fought to lift himself from the stone as he felt the familiar warmth that normally fueled his light. He found four then five extinguished glows, its smoke that of a soul that had been taken from the mortal realm. He left the ground and drifted towards what once were infinite lives that resided against his tall walls before spinning to find the one behind the sudden deaths. He found nothing until he looked up. Another being flowed above him, taking lives one by one if not two at a time. Though the lights had dimmed his own, Neji grew furious, his fury further fueling his once lost flame enough for him to shoot towards the figure that disrupted what went on in the world just next to them.

He found a being similar to himself, but darker, more dull and oddly cold, but in a sense that differed from the one that had stabbed through Neji’s fiery core. Immediately, Neji’s rage dulled as he studied the black aura around the newcomer. The new entity turned to face Neji in the blur of the darkness he carried with him. The dark cloud that stretched to end countless lives all at once became one until a cold face appeared, greyed over just as it once was. It was calm the same as it was when it visited Neji each day and carried the lost souls through their life story. It was the escort, the chaperone, the shadow, the wanderer. It was Shikamaru.

Neji had only watched him in surprise until his anger returned to make him glow even hotter in the face of the calm shadow who hardly did so much as move. Neji expressed his rage through flame until he realized that his burn had returned. His hands, no longer opaque as crystal, his core no longer cool as stone, his power no longer diluted. He watched Shikamaru and felt his aura before he faced the lights that smoked, no longer ablaze. Shikamaru moved enough for the life bearer to take in the sight of which he hadn’t seen for years. It was empty but almost nostalgic. He supposed that his dying heat had to be resolved. The only way being mass death whether it be through an accident or natural disaster. However the souls were extracted from the mortal realm, Neji glowed anew at the hands of the cold shadow who seemed to have been reassigned.

Shikamaru who once had been no more than an escort had been reborn, reassigned by the gods as the one to extinguish and send the souls with ease seeing that the life bearer would not put out lights to even help so much as himself. It was a perfect balance that the two quickly gained awareness of. The two drifted around one another, around the circumference of the tall tower tower in mesmerizing circles, higher and higher through the seemingly roofless structure. They had been reunited. The Shadow would no longer have to dread deports. Neji would no longer have to wait on his return. They were together, forever to monitor the light castle’s glow and regulate the castle’s temperature together in a sacred harmony.

Neji was first to slow the small game of circles. Shikamaru was slow to follow having been lost in the radiance of the other’s. Because of this, the shadow collided with Neji, sending them spinning, attached to one another, nearly destroying multiple lives by the masses simply by misstepping alone. Neji pried himself free to check the flames before his own grew hotter. The two had been intertwined but neither one burned or cooled dangerously. Neji spun to match the shadow’s shocked stare. They were matched. They were equals. They were the same entity of different shades. They were compatible.

Shikamaru’s black aura shrank until he was fully visible. Neji only saw him. He saw no lingering black cloud. He saw the chaperone from the eternity they’ve spent with one another. He saw the one he had missed dearly far longer than he cared to remember before he reached out. In turn, the shadow was a bit more hesitant, nevertheless, he reached for the hand of the light. Once their forms contacted, they felt nothing more than either a comforting warmth or a calming cool. Soon, finger tips turned into joined palms then two pairs of hands joined until they drifted closer, closer than their existences have ever allowed them to be before. Shikamaru felt Neji’s warmth against his cold face. Neji felt Shikamaru’s coolness calm him, collecting his many strings of thoughts neatly. They indulged in the simple touch of one another that had been off limits for countless generations until the touch melted them into one another. Neji detached the hold of their hands and held the shadow’s cold, grey face instead, placing millenniums worth of yearning into a simple burning kiss that heated Shikamaru’s icy lips.

The gods above, it seemed, had been watching over the two who had been hopelessly devoted to the other all for nothing in return at all. Shikamaru’s rebirth had been a gift sent by those high above.


End file.
